Climate policy after Copenhagen

Rosmarie Bär, Alliance Sud

Copenhagen has left climate policy circles with something of a hangover. There were no positive signals, and for now it was impossible to kick-start the stalled negotiations. To get them back on track, the UN has convened a meeting in Bonn at short notice (see box).
There are only slim chances that the end of the year could still bring a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. A long-time insider of the Swiss Federal Administration puts them at one per cent maximum. Why this assessment?

1. Things are at a standstill regarding CO2 reduction targets. The national target figures announced by the industrialized and emerging countries are not a single per cent higher than before Copenhagen. The EU is standing by its paltry 20 per cent, as is Switzerland, and this despite the common knowledge that at that rate we are heading for a temperature increase of 3.5 degrees.
2. The new EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has already given up hope of a binding agreement. Even in January, the President of the failed Copenhagen Summit pleaded for an effort to arrive at a «real climate treaty» in Mexico. She now calls this «unrealistic» and at this point is expecting only «partial political agreement».
3. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Secretariat, will throw in the towel on 1 July. This is a serious blow to the progress of negotiations under UN auspices. De Boer was seen as the guarantor of a post-Kyoto agreement in which developing countries would be present at the negotiation table on an equal footing.
4. The US Senate continues to torpedo President Obama’s climate legislation and by extension any constructive international role. Instead, the US Special Envoy on Climate Change is calling on emerging countries for «more far-reaching measures», otherwise even the minimum agreement reached in Copenhagen would be «stillborn». The US wants to conduct the global climate negotiations within exclusive groups such as the G20 or the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change. The biggest polluters would in that case be amongst themselves and the poorer developing countries left out.
5. On a voluntary basis, China wishes to emit 40-45 per cent less greenhouse gases per unit of GDP than in 2005, and India 20-25 per cent less. These are not cuts, but merely a slowing of emissions. Both countries are demanding higher reduction targets of industrialized countries.
6. Under the Copenhagen Accord, developing countries are to be provided with 30 billion over the next three years and 100 billion US dollars as of 2020 for adaptation and protection measures. Where the money is to come from, is anybody's guess. The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian colleague Meles Zenawi have been charged by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with seeking innovative long-term funding sources to fill the climate protection funding gap. There is a great danger that instead of fresh funds coming into play, development funds will simply be relabelled.
   In the Swiss Administration a special delegation is currently trying to identify the sources from which to draw the 150 million Swiss francs announced by Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger in Copenhagen as the Swiss contribution for the years 2010-12. Where and when they will find the funds is anyone’s guess.
   

Rosmaire Bär, Alliance Sud

Crowded schedule

The «deadlock-breaking round» of climate change negotiations convened at short notice by the UN will take place from 9 to 11 April in Bonn [at the time of going to press; edit.]. In early June (31 May –11 June), an interim, ministerial conference will take place. The next Conference of the Parties will be held from 29 November–10 December in Cancún (Mexico). In addition, Switzerland is looking into the idea of convening a handpicked «Ministerial Round» on the topic «Adapting to Climate Change» in the autumn.
In response to the failure of Copenhagen, Bolivia's President Evo Morales has invited social movements from around the world to a conference (People's World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth's Rights). It is set for 19-22 April in Cochabamba.

Article published in: Alliance Sud News No. 63, Spring 2010